Elizabeth Bear: Faster Gun

Her eyes had been straining into the shadows beyond the shadowy bulk of the horses. She looked at Doc, now, startled. “I beg your pardon. Just a turn of phra—”

Another rustle silenced her. Louder this time, closer. Doc let the coach gun rest beside his leg. He didn’t want to fire a scattergun over the horses that hemmed them on both sides, though he could use the big brown for cover and a shooting rest if he had to. Once. And then it would be hooves and half-ton panic everywhere, in a crowded chamber with uncertain footing.

Better for everyone if they could get out of this without gunfire.

Flora must have thought so too. “Bill,” she said, low and conversational this time so it would carry. “How’s that ward line coming?”

“Faster now,” Bill answered, over a scraping sound. Doc caught a scent of burning orrisroot. A ward line wouldn’t stop a bullet—lead just didn’t answer to magic—but it would keep a person out.

“Hey,” Miss Lil said, forgetting to whisper—and as Doc turned his head toward her, she suddenly pointed back over his shoulder.

He whipped round, the coach gun to his eye, up on tiptoe to get line of sight over the back of the brown mare. Trying to remember not to hold his breath, because if he held his breath, he would start coughing. And if he started coughing, there was no guarantee that he would ever stop.

Over the iron sights of the gun, Doc glimpsed something that nearly made him drop it.

The figure half-silhouetted against the blue glow at the back of one of the above-ground-level tunnels could have been a naked child just on the verge of puberty—slender, fine-limbed, large-headed for the delicate lines of an elongated neck. Except he—or she, or possibly even it—hung upside down by its toes in the mouth of the tunnel like one of the slick mud-green tree frogs of Doc’s Georgia boyhood. The long fat-tipped fingers on its splayed hands did nothing to disabuse him of the comparison.

The hands—

Its hands were empty.

Incrementally, Doc let the coach gun drift down, aware that beside him Flora was doing the same. The harsh breaths of his companions echoed to every side, layering over one another in an atonal fugue.

Doc pointed the shotgun in a safe position and uncocked it. He lowered the butt to the ground, letting the barrel lean against his knee. He raised his hands again, fingers spread wide like the frog-thing’s, showing them to be empty.

“Well,” he said. “I reckon you ain’t from around here.”

The thing made no sound in return, but it leaned forward from the hips. Behind Doc, Missus Shutt stepped out from between horses, her iron reholstered too. Doc wanted to hiss at her to keep cover—the bony-limbed critter could be a decoy, a distraction. But as she walked forward, her boot toes nosing softly through the rust and trash on the floor, each step tested before she shifted her weight onto it—well, Doc found himself just purely unable to intervene.

And all Missus Shutt’s companions just stood around and watched her risk her fool life like charades with moon men was some kind of a fashionable parlor game.

“Hey there, friend,” said Missus Shutt. She spread her hands out a little wider, until Doc could see the light and shadows stretched between her fingertips. She paused when Doc could just see the faint greeny glow of Bill’s ward line shining against the scarred leather of her boots. “We didn’t know there were any survivors of the crash. We’re here to help.”

The moon man didn’t even shift. But his—its—ribcage swelled visibly with what might have been a deep breath. Doc found that strangely reassuring: If it breathed, it was alive. And if it was alive, it was vulnerable to flying bits of metal and flying hexes both.

Missus Shutt must have read some encouragement in its steady posture, because she let her hands drop gently against her thighs and said, “My name is Elisa Shutt. I’m a duly-appointed representative of James Garfield, the President of the United States of America, the political institution whose territory this is. And I am empowered to offer you assistance on behalf of my government.”

Hah , thought Doc. I knew there was something more to this than treasure hunters.

Behind him—not to him—Miss Lil whispered, “I thought this was a shooting adventure,” and Missus Jorgensen answered, “It isn’t over yet,” her tone prim as a Yankee schoolmarm’s.

”Shh,“ Flora hissed back, jerking her head at Doc.

Miss Lil replied, “He can’t hear what’s out of—”

That echoing incomprehensibility claimed the rest of the sentence. Maybe she’d turned her head.

Maybe she was using some kind of hex to keep him from hearing what she didn’t think he’d ought.

Flora ducked back against the horse. Doc could tell from the timbre of her voice as she leaned across the saddle that what she said to Lil, she meant to hiss low and sharp. But those echoes were deceptive, and his ears were pretty good.

“”That’s John Henry Fucking Holliday over there,”“ the quadroon whispered, as if his name were something to conjure with. She gave it more weight than Missus Shutt had given President Garfield’’s. “”He’ll kill you off , not just kill you out. So unless you never want to see 1881 again—”—“

Doc snorted. Out of the corner of his mouth he said, “I heard that.” He was a good shot, fast, and despite his cough he rode with the Tombstone posse when the law needed him. But he hadn’t ever killed even a single man—although to hear some people tell it, he might have shot down two or three hundred.

Still, he kept hearing that ring in her tone: awe as if at something out of legend… even as he kept his eye on the motionless moon man tree frog which—who—breathed, and looked at them, and breathed again.

She said his name like he was somebody.

Doc’s confusion was interrupted by the glitter of the moon man’s wide, black, sclera-less eyes as its head turned slightly, tracking the sounds of the others. He didn’t reach for the coach gun. He could skin his pistol faster, if he had to. But he was really starting to think he might not have to shoot.

“We come in peace,” Missus Shutt said.

The moon man was still in near shadow, but a little light fell across its face from the side, now that it had its head turned. Doc saw the long split of its lipless mouth part above—it was still upside down—the flat bump where a nose should have been. He saw the tongue glisten.

“Water,” the thing said, in the piping voice of a child.

“You need water?” asked Missus Shutt.

It reached out a hand. “I give water,” it replied, in warbling tones.

The Code of the West , Doc thought. Even a moon man understood it. He reached to lift his coach gun by the barrel, to slide it back into the saddle holster.

The sound of a pistol shot, dizzy-loud in the echoing space as if somebody had boxed his ears, knocked him back against the gelding. The brown mare sidled, yanking her tie down, and hammered the coach gun from his hand. It went to the floor, under stomping hooves. To dive for it was to risk a crushed skull.

Deafened, seeing black spots, head ducked, Doc hauled himself up the saddle leathers, his pistol in his right hand. A horse was screaming; so was the moon man. Or what Doc assumed was the moon man: It sounded like a reed instrument blown to piercing discord, and it went through Doc more sharply even than the report of the gun.

The moon man wasn’t where it had been. Doc assumed it had sensibly dropped out of the tunnel and sought cover, just like everything that could.

The mare and the gelding stamped and twisted, trying to bolt, caught on their snubbed-off reins. Between them was a bad place to be. Dodging past their hindquarters wasn’t any better. And there was Flora, clinging to the saddle beside him, a death grip on the pommel as she tried to stay by the gelding’s shoulder and not get smashed by hooves and rumps as the panicked mare swung around and bumped him behind.